Gentle Parenting Retreat

Gentle parenting can sometimes be quite emotionally draining, it can take a lot out of you because you have to give a lot. Sometimes it is good to take some time out, not to get away from your children but to take some time and space to relax and refill your emotional cup. It's important we do this to be effective parents, we must meet our own emotional needs in order to meet those of our children.

It's for this reason I decided to organise a one day gentle parenting retreat near me for like minded mums to come together, share their experiences and relax.

The day will begin with arrival between 9 and 10 (I know what it's like trying to get anywhere early with children about), we will spend this time getting to know each other a bit and sharing a hot cup of tea or coffee.  

Our first session is a creative art session which will give us an opportunity to explore themes of motherhood, express our innate creativity and experiment with materials, no art experience necessary, we will of course stop half way through for refreshments.

We will break half way through the day for a delicious lunch.

In the afternoon we will learn about mindfulness and how it we can incorporate it into our parenting and we will end the day with a relaxing guided meditation so we can all float home in a peaceful and relaxed trance!

The day long session with two therapists and lunch costs £75.00.  I have 14 places available.  Any mothers who practice gentle parenting or attachment parenting are welcome to join us.  It doesn't matter if your children are toddlers or teenagers, the only restrictions on this even is that it is mothers only.  You don't even have to be local to attend this event.  

Please get in touch if you are interested, details are on the flyer.

New items in the shop

As promised I am adding new items to my shop every day, going to try to stick to my word and continue adding items over the next few days.

I have added to the bunting in the collection with both more cotton bunting and some vintage paper bunting too.  I will be continuing to add bunting as the weeks pass, I have some gorgeous new fabrics and I am even planning a few festive strings of bunting ready for Christmas.

Aaaand, I am really excited to be bringing back some vintage ceramics.  Again I have more to add over the next days/weeks.  I love these so much, can't wait to share them with you.

Here are some peeks at my new items:

Home pre-school - Foot prints in the sand painting

Our theme for the summer is The Seaside, we have had some lovely sunny days this year so I decided it would be fun to do some outdoors painting.  In my mind I was thinking about footprints in the sand and making a way of capturing the footprints that are so fleeting on the beach. 

I got a couple of baking trays and poured some different colours of poster paint into them.  My boys stood in the paint (with help - it was slippy) the walked and ran along the paper, creating a crazy mess of painty footprints.

The paper was some packing paper than came with an Amazon order. 

Gotta love those little feet. 

And those even littler ones. 

It was a fun, quick activity, I have stuck the strip of paper up the stairs in our house and when we change theme I will probably cut a few bits out to keep.

THE WINNER

Congratulations to Fiona McCormick who has won the brilliant Lion King activity kit,

Please message on Facebook me and I will send you your prize.

If you are interested in buying one of these kits you can now order one online at a bargain price of £18.00 and for a limited time I will be selling them with FREE POSTAGE!  Check it out!

LION KING GIVEAWAY!!

GIVEAWAY DAY IS HERE!!

Today I am giving away this fabulous kit containing everything you need for a fun Lion King themed activity week that we did a few weeks ago.

The kit includes:

Jungle shaped playdough cutters,

Silicone bug cake/ice/jelly mould,

Six plastic bug toys, 

Six plastic jungle/safari animal toys,

One dropper pipette,

Instructions for making jungle play dough

Cotton drawstring bag to keep everything in.

This kit is worth £18.00 and I will be taking orders from anyone who wants to buy one after the giveaway is finished.

To enter you need to:

Like my facebook page,

Like the Facebook post about this giveaway,

Leave a comment on the facebook post about this giveaway. 

The giveaway closes on Friday 10th July, I will announce the winner, chosen at random, here and on my facebook page that evening. 

Here is a reminder of some of the brilliant activities you can do with this kit:

Good Luck!!

COMING MONDAY - LION KING GIVEAWAY!!!

Tune in on Monday evening for my first giveaway on this blog!!

I will be giving away this fabulous kit containing everything you need for a fun Lion King themed activity week.

The kit includes:

Jungle shaped playdough cutters,

Silicone bug cake/ice/jelly mould,

Six plastic bug toys, 

Six plastic jungle/safari animal toys,

One dropper pipette,

Instructions for making jungle play dough

Cotton bag to keep everything in.

This kit is worth £18.00 and I will be taking orders from anyone who wants to buy one after the giveaway is finished.

Details of how to enter will be shared on Monday.

Home Preschool - Sand hand print

Quite often when I come up with an activity for the boys I get caught up in the moment and forget to take photos of the process, sometimes it's only after that I think "Oh I had better take some photos for the blog!"  so please forgive the serious lack of development photos, I will try to describe it as best as I can so you get get the picture. 

Following on with our Seaside theme, and thinking about hand and foot prints in the sand I thought it would be interesting for Boris to help make a permanent memento of his little hands in plaster of Paris, but with a beachy, sandy effect to make you think of holidays on the beach. 

To to do this activity I began with a small plastic bowl that I pressed some sand in to.  I then got Boris to press his hand into the sand and I neatened it up after he took his hand away, I had to press it quite firmly in and press in each finger.  

Next in a separate bowl I mixed up some plaster of Paris by pouring in some water then adding the powder until I got a creamy texture, I got Boris to help me scoop the powder and pour it into the bowl and give it  stir with a wooden spoon.   

Next Boris helped me pour it onto the sand and I gave the bowl a little nudge to get any air bubbles out.  

I left it about 15 minutes to set then carefully tapped it out.  I have it a little brush with a dustpan brush to get the lose sand off, and there you have it!  A lovely sandy hand print. 

Don't forget to stay tuned for my brilliant GIVEAWAY coming soon.

The Lion King Week - Day 7

Back in the summer last year Boris was mad on The Lion King film so I thought it would be fun to do a Lion King themed week for him with lots of sensory activities and fun things to do.  I didn't get round to posting about it at the time because it was a big project and I just never seemed to find the time to gather and edit all the photos. 

I have finally found the motivation to share it with you, (probably because I have been really lacking in activities for the boys recently so have nothing else activity-wise to share)  so here is it.  7 days of our activities to take you through the week.

Today I have two fun Lion King themes activities for you, and then Lion King week has come to an end.  We had such a fun time doing these activities, watching the film, singing songs to the CD, dressing up and pretending to be lions, I really hope some of these ideas have inspired you with activities to do with your children. 

Today I did a little bug exploration for Boris, I put some wood chips into a tray and buried some little plastic bugs I had under them. 

I gave him some tongs to have a dug around with and he picked out the bugs from the tray and put them into a cup. 

Excellent for the fine motor skills. 

Next we made a mask together, well if I am honest, I made it mostly myself because I used to be an art teacher and I still like colouring with oil pastels.  

I used a paper plate, oil pastels, tissue paper and a lollypop stick.

I was pretty impressed with it myself!

Don't forget you can subscribe by email to my posts (on the right had side) and you can like my facebook page to keep up to date with posts.

Lion King Week - Day 6

Back in the summer last year Boris was mad on The Lion King film so I thought it would be fun to do a Lion King themed week for him with lots of sensory activities and fun things to do.  I didn't get round to posting about it at the time because it was a big project and I just never seemed to find the time to gather and edit all the photos. 

I have finally found the motivation to share it with you, (probably because I have been really lacking in activities for the boys recently so have nothing else activity-wise to share)  so here is it.  7 days of our activities to take you through the week.

The last one with the bug mould I promise, though I think there is more potential for this lovely mould. 

This time we made cakes with them, this was a second attempt because the first attempt got very stuck in the mould, so I really really greased it second time round and they came out fine. 

I used a cake mix so Boris had a stir and helped fill the mould with a spoon, and then we iced them together with some tubes of icing, which was fun. 

Join me again for another Lion King themes activity tomorrow evening. Don't forget you can subscribe by email to my posts (on the right had side) and you can like my facebook page to keep up to date with posts.

Slam Book

Back at the start of the year one of my goals for 2015 was to take a photo a day for 2015 and to make a slam book.  I decided to combine the two ideas by making a slam page for each photo.

I haven't managed to take a photo every single day, but have taken one most days.  I also haven't kept up with the slam book and I am quite a few weeks behind.  I am not sure if I will carry on with it or not, it was fun at first, I enjoyed being a bit ruthless with which papers to choose, but now I am so behind it feels a bit like a burden.  At first I was printing off the photos really regularly at an instant photo place, and I was doing a few pages a couple of times a week, but it was costing too much money so I decided to stop that and print them less frequently online, however this caused me to become more and more behind because I had to make it worth the postage so was saving them up.  The more recent pages have also had less time spent on them so I feel they aren't as good, but I suppose the whole point is to stop me being so particular about each photo.  But this is also part of the problem with keeping up with it, I still find myself agonising too much about every single page, and that just takes too much time.  So we shall see if I continue with it or not.

Anyway in spite of not being able to keep up with it I thought you might like to see a few of the pages I have done (showing people the book is probably my favorite thing about it, after all what is the point of art without an audience?)

Fun Things to do With Toddlers - Snow Theme Activities

My husband and I have decided that we will most probably be home educating Boris and Biscuit in the future.  Of course home education doesn't start when a child turns three, or four or the term after their fifth birthday or whenever the local authority says it should,  Home education happens all the time and we are already doing it every day of the week. 

Sometimes, however, I get a bit overwhelmed and worried about the responsibility.  I don't want to let my boys down; neither of them go to nursery at the moment so their education is already solely in my hands, and I get all panicky that I am not doing enough and I don't know where to start, so I have joined a ton of Facebook groups for support and encouragement and to ask questions (What would I do without my beloved Facebook?).  One group I recently joined is called "Weekly book and activity challenge for HE".  Every few weeks they have a new book/theme to follow and members share photos of what they have been up to. I liked this idea because it gave me something to focus on with the boys, I was getting myself into a bit of a muddle. 

The first theme was The Snow Queen/Frozen.  So I borrowed a copy of the Snow Queen from the library, we watched Frozen and we did some snow themed activities.  Here are some of the activities we did.  This theme is totally still relevant, I was so hoping it would snow, but it wasn't to be, but it would be awesome to do some of them if it was also snowing outside. 

1. First we made little plasticine snowmen from plasticine that Boris got for Christmas, I did most of the building here, but Boris told me what colours he wanted for what and what clothes he wanted his snow people to wear.  I love that he made me make babies for them.

2.  The old corn flour and oil snow activity which we have done before only this time I used baby oil instead of rapeseed oil so our snow was white rather than the slightly peculiar looking yellow snow we had last year!

The mixture of the two ingredients (1 cup of each I think) results in a snow that is crunchy and mould-able, just like real snow, you could even put it in the fridge to make it chilly for the full sensory experience. 

I am not going to lie, this activity ended up with shouting and hoovering.

3.  Plastic snow confetti.  I bought this from the supermarket a while ago, not really knowing what to do with it, but thinking it might be fun for something, so just put it in a bowl and let the boys have a dig around, it did make a bit of a mess and had to go away when Biscuit started eating it. 

4. Snowmen skittles, what fun!!  Boris helped me to draw on some of the faces (cue Tim Burton style snowmen) and he stuck the noses on.  We stacked them up then sent them flying with a plastic "snowball".  A fun game for a while, but Boris found it more fun to break the polystyrene cups into bits when I was out of the room. 

5.  This was a pretty awesome activity, Boris and I dipped cotton wool balls in equal parts flour and water then baked in the oven for 45 mins.  He then hammered them to crack them open and broke the the coating with his fingers.  The sensory experience of opening the crunchy hard coating and revealing the soft fluffy centre is out of the world.  I am tingling just thinking about it, and even took some to my Bible study group, so they could share in the sensory wonderment.  I was hoping they would look more like snowballs when they came out, but they were a little browned.  (Again, called time on this activity because of eating)

6. Puffy Snowman painting - I made a mixture of shaving foam and a dollop of PVA glue and mixed it together to form the base of the "paint".  Boris scooped the mixture onto the black paper into some circle outlines I made and then we added the embellishments on together, buttons, bow, beads, boggly eyes etc.  The snowman looked great when it was finished, really fluffy like meringue.  Fascinatingly the next day the snowman had continued to puff up under the dried outer layer so began to look like he had gained a few pounds and even had some stretch marks!! Boris asked why and I replied "science".   When I was out of the room, Boris used the foam that was leftover to sty his hair.  

Four days later and much poking from Boris and it looks more like a sorry burns victim,and a little bit creepy.  We are still waiting to see if it goes crusty. 

So there you have it, four fab snow themed activities.  This week our theme is Space.